Paid Vacation a Right in Europe, a Luxury Elsewhere

In November 2016 Expedia.com commissioned a study on work-life balance in 28 countries worldwide. When conducting an analysis on behalf of Expedia.com, Northstar examined vacation patterns in the selected countries taking into account paid vacation days. John Morrey, Vice President and General Manager of Expedia.com feels strongly about work-life balance and believes that vacation is critical to maintaining the right balance and to being happy. He hopes that Vacation Deprivation study would remind people to look into their vacation patterns and to disconnect, de-stress and unwind more often. It has been identified that that people in general feel happier, healthier, and more focused after a holiday.

In Europe, paid vacation days are very much a right. The study found that Spanish, Finnish and French workers take all of their 30 vacation days off. Italians and Germans also have 30 days of statutory vacation; however, they usually take couple of days less. It is interesting to note that despite having 30 vacation days, 68% of Spanish employees feel ‘very or somewhat vacation deprived,’ while Norwegians, Finns and Swiss feel mostly content with the amount of holidays that they get.

To read the entire study, please follow the following two links >> here and >> here, where the first one provides the table of the examined countries and the latter one provides valuable interactive maps.